


secret boyfriend

by katrinawritesthings



Category: SHINee
Genre: Brotp, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-10-22 01:59:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10687443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katrinawritesthings/pseuds/katrinawritesthings
Summary: jinki is the secret boyfriend and taems playing bust a move“Can you, um,” Taemin says. “Pretend I didn’t just accidentally come out again?” Jonghyun seemingly took the news well enough but he doesn’t need that shit getting out to more people.tumblrtw for mentions of homophobia





	secret boyfriend

Red to red… blue to blue… a yellow wedged up against the side and out of the way… a red connecting two big groups to pop… a green snuck perfectly in through a hole to drop down a good fifth of the board… a white wedged up next to the yellow, a green next to the white, a row added on top, another green just slightly too far to one side that blocks the yellow, another yellow that can’t reach the first now, a blue accidentally added to the green, a red, two yellows that pop, a red, another row, a blue, a white, a green, a fuck, fuck, _fuck fuck--_

_“FUCK,”_ Taemin hisses, slapping his fist on the arcade machine next to the button as the game screen turns black and white and all of the little bubbles fall down. That was bullshit. He sighs at the countdown timer and grabs a quarter off of the pile he dumped onto the control panel before he started playing. Sliding it into the player two coin slot, he takes a moment to rub his eyes and shake out his hands. That was fifty-something levels that he did in a row without dying once. Not his best, but pretty good still. Slapping the start button, he takes in the beginning of the level again. Simple enough. He won’t fuck up this time.

He goes through the motions, nudging the joystick lightly with his left hand, his right hand gently tapping the shoot button in tune to the music between each real press. Soon, like usual, his eyes kind of blur out of focus. He can still see the blobs of color to match on the screen, so he doesn’t mind. He just plays the game and listens to the bouncy music, falling into the experience and only pausing every once in a while to take a sip of his half-melted strawberry slushie.

“Hey.”

“Mmh.” A soft voice barely brings Taemin out of his reverie. They came at the short pause between the end of one level and the start of another so Taemin spares a quick glance to figure out who it is: Jonghyun from fourth period geometry. He hums again as he focuses back on the game.

“Aren’t you part of Jinki’s birthday party too?” Jonghyun asks. “Or are you just also here by chance?”

“No, I’m with Jinki,” Taemin mumbles. He was the first one invited to the party going on right now. He was there when Jinki was reserving two bowling lanes online and everything. He crouches slightly to get a better angle of the screen as he lines up a shot.

“Why are you alone in here instead of bowling with the rest of us then?” Jonghyun asks. Taemin thinks he’s watching him instead of the screen, but he doesn’t care enough to look. He shrugs as he finishes up the level.

“I hate bowling,” he says. Before the next level starts he takes a sip of his slushie and only scrunches a little bit at how watery it’s getting. The new level start is simple and he already remembers exactly how to beat it from his multiple days in front of this machine waiting for Jinki to finish his shifts. Out of the corner of his eye, Jonghyun leans lazily up against the other half of the machine.

“Why’d you come to a bowling alley party, then?” he asks this time. Taemin shrugs again.

“Because I love Jinki,” he says. Simple. He’s not gonna not show up to his boyfriend’s party. And he’s not gonna stay in the arcade on his own for the whole time. He’ll slouch back out to join the others when it’s time for presents and cake. A blue bubble lands a pixel to the left of where he meant it to; biting his lip, he finagles the joystick carefully to line up his next shot around his mistake.

“Like, platonically?” Jonghyun asks after he shoots. Taemin frowns. No, what the fuck.

“Romantically,” he says. Like, obviously. He doesn’t care about his regular friends enough to come to a bowling alley for them. Maybe a qpr but he doesn’t exactly have one of those at the moment.

“Ahhh,” Jonghyun hums. “Haven’t told him yet?” he asks. The sympathetic tone in his voice makes Taemin frown again. For the first time in a while he actually takes his focus off of the game in front of him. He keeps his eyes on it, pretending to be concentrating on a shot, and thinks. Why the fuck would Jonghyun think he--

Oh, fuck that's right. He’s not even fucking out to Jonghyun.

Or, well, he _wasn’t,_ until now. Whoops.

“Uh, no,” he says, sighing out the lie with a shake of his head. “I don’t… know if he would take it well,” he mumbles. He slips back into his concentration on the game again, for real this time now that he knows what he’s saying again. He knows how to pretend that Jinki is straight and not actually his boyfriend. He does it on a daily basis at school. “Can you, um,” he says, tapping a few shots out to finish the level. “Pretend I didn’t just accidentally come out again?” Jonghyun seemingly took the news well enough but he doesn’t need that shit getting out to more people. He’s heard that Jonghyun has a big mouth but he’s also heard that he’s good at keeping important secrets. He’s more than banking on that second aspect right now.

“Yeah, sure,” Jonghyun says. Taemin breathes a soft sigh of relief. That’s good. “What do you mean by ‘again,’ though?” Jonghyun says. He sounds amused and curious, and he leans even more into the corner of Taemin’s view. “Who else have you accidentally come out to?” he asks. Taemin snorts.

“Choi,” he says, and then, “Minho,” he adds, just in case Jonghyun thought of the wrong one. “He saw my report card and pointed out that I had straight B’s and I told him that it was the only straight thing about me.” He shrugs tiredly. It kind of followed the usual pattern of his life: great joke, bad timing. He hears Jonghyun snort softly and shrugs again. He was probably distracted by something like he was this time. After that, Jonghyun is silent, eyes on the arcade screen. Taemin doesn’t mind him watching. He tones everything out when he’s playing anyway. An extra human has never been a problem. At least Jonghyun isn’t a crowd of little kids.

Soon he gets lost in the game again, in the colors, in the patterns, in the repetitive tune that fills his ears and makes him feel swimmy. The darkness of the rest of the arcade coupled with the brightness of the screen gives the illusion he’s the only one in here, a peaceful hyperfocused solitude from the crowd of people out in the main alley. When he blinks his eyelids are heavy but a good kind of heavy; the kind of heavy where he could curl up and sleep soon if he wanted to but is content with staying up and doing this instead. He finishes another several levels without taking his eyes off of the screen.

“You know,” Jonghyun says quietly. Taemin doesn’t look away but he does register mild surprise that he’s still here. He figured Jonghyun would have left him to go back to the party by now. “I bet Jinki would be open to it,” Jonghyun says. “I bet you two would be cute together.”

“Mmh,” Taemin hums. “Cool.” He knows for a fact that they are absolutely adorable together, but that’s not something that Jonghyun needs to know. He doesn’t know what Jonghyun meant by “open to it.” It could either mean “I think he’s straight but wouldn’t be violently homophobic if you brought it up” or “I somehow know that he is also into dudes but I’m being really vague about it because I don’t want to out him.” It is a mystery, and not one that Taemin wants to bother trying to figure out right now. “I’m fine,” he mumbles. “I’m not new to unrequited crushes.” That’s actually not a lie; his life is a whole closet full of crushes on straight boys. Besides Jinki.

“Same,” Jonghyun sighs. Taemin hums shortly. Unless he’s more in the closet than Taemin is, Taemin doesn’t think that Jonghyun’s straight boy “I’m too shy to talk to girls” problems really compare to his “If I tell a straight boy I like him then he could potentially murder me” problems. But whatever.

“Hey, Taemie--Taemin.”

For the first time, Taemin looks completely away from his game when Jinki’s voice calls through the arcade. He’s at the entrance, walking passed the air hockey table with a sheepish little smile. His birthday hat is just hanging around his neck like an absurd necklace and Taemin automatically feels himself smiling, already so enamored by his babe doing nothing.

“Taemietaemin,” Jonghyun says, a sly little grin on his lips, and when Jinki reaches him he pushes his shoulder lightly.

“You can’t make fun of me for mispronouncing things on my birthday,” he says. “That’s against the rules.” Taemin hides a small laugh in the back of his hand. A mispronunciation. Sure. Behind Jonghyun’s back he cocks a brow at Jinki’s excuse for the pet name. Now Jinki’s trying to accidentally out both of them to Jonghyun, apparently. Jinki twitches a brow back at him so quickly he almost misses it. “I thought you were peeing?” he asks Jonghyun accusingly.

“Uh, I mean,” Jonghyun says. He scratches the side of his head guiltily. “I did, but then I got distracted.” He waves a hand blandly at Taemin and his game. Taemin snorts at being blamed and pushes Jonghyun’s shoulder lightly as well.

“No one made you stay here,” he says. Jonghyun just shrugs back innocently.

“Anyway,” Jinki says. “Come on. Time to set the cake sacrifice aflame and praise me through song.” He grabs both of their wrists as they laugh and tugs them out of the arcade. Taemin only stops them for a few seconds to grab the rest of his quarters, leaving the game empty for anyone that wants to pick up where he left off. As they leave the arcade, Jinki fits himself in between the two of them and lets their wrists go. Taemin catches his hand and locks their fingers together for just a moment before letting go completely, and shares a secret little smile with him before they return to the rest of the party.


End file.
